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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Santorum Wins Kansas--Nobody Cares

Apparently Wyoming and Kansas don't even rate the top slot of CNN which had Paula Deen on it in the largest slot last I looked. On RealClearPolitics, Santorum Wins Kansas was at the top--of the side bar.

It think this is because of the narrative that we now have: The game is Romney's--it's just going to take some time (and blood)--but that's it. Even through the month of March--which is projected to be Santorum's--nothing serious will change.

It's a telling state of affairs for the night HBO's Game Change comes out. I'm sure both Romney and Santorum--and far more so Santorum--are looking for a Game Change.

Game Changers
Although parts of 2008 were predictable the race was dominated by two "Black Swan" events (rare, unpredictable major events that materially changed the race). The first was Russia's invasion of Georgia. The second was the economic meltdown.

Let us not also discount specifically created game-changers the most notable of course being Sarah Palin's addition to the Republican ticket. Although derided and made out to be the reason "McCain lost"let's remember that she energized the base in a way McCain simply never could (also on the list is McCain 'suspending his campaign' to deal with the financial crisis and going to Washington).

So What's Up for 2012?
The things we see coming today are:

Israel attacks Iran. Certainly Obama is trying to do everything he can to forestall this until after the election--but no one can control Israel.

Euro Melt-down. Yes Greece defaulted. This time no one cares. What about next time?

Eight Dollar Per Gallon Gas. Even without a gulf war gas prices are up. They're likely to stay up for some time. That's going to leave a mark.

On the human-events side:

The Rubio-Reveal. Someone--most likely Romney--will have a great deal of pressure to pick Marco Rubio as a running mate. The conventional wisdom says this will not happen: he's too young, he's not vetted, he has the same Natural Born Citizen problem that some people think Obama has (both his parents were not citizens when he was born). He was a Mormon in his early days (so double-Mormon leaves some people iffy). But there is no deining he is latino and charismatic. Did I mention he was latino.

The Hillary-Reveal. Similarly, although Mrs. Clinton has said she won't do it and Obama has said he's not entertaining it, a lot of people think adding Hillary to the ticket at the Democratic convention would make a lot of sense. For certain it would add the "historical element" back to the race. It would court women voters--a key wedge issue the Democrats feel they can lock up. And, hey: Biden's a tough guy--he can handle being thrown under the bus ... can't he?

What Don't We See Coming?

None of these are black-swans. All of these are predictable and, I am sure, every campaign except maybe Santorum's has plans in place to deal with them (Santorum is probably focusing on March. Gingrich probably has made up fifty two different plans for each in his head, and Ron Paul has already had the same set of plans on the books for years).

If I had to look into my crystal ball, though, here are a few things that I think could shake the campaign up that are not predicted.

Terrorist Attack: Ironically this probably helps Obama. He has largely shed the weak-on-terror label with his Bin Laden kill. None of the candidates have real military chops (Ron Paul was a doctor in the Air Force and is no hawk).

Major Scandal: Breitbart was going for this--but it has yet to materialize. However, there is always the (limited) possibility that something could come out--from left field. I am going to say that unless Breitbart has something really good we've yet to see neither Romney nor Obama is especially vulnerable here. Maybe something could take out Gingrich ... or Ron Paul?

Eco-Catastrophe: The question here is this--if something weird happened with climate would that help Obama? Like a major fish or crop die-off? Or a massive spike in summer temperatures? Would it change anyone's mind? I'm not sure.

The Upshot

Here is a great Nate Silver column that runs the numbers for Santorum and finds he needs to exceed his current demographics by about 10%--which doesn't sound like much--but is really very unlikely. Certainly the candidates are going to do their best to close the deal as soon as possible (although Romney may just play defense--but that has been bad for him).

In other words, I think there's a reason no one cares about Kansas and Wyoming: they voted the way they expected, they fit the current narrative. They're not news.